SAP Project Status Reporting Tutorial
Ever wonder why you are chasing project status? I have, and I have put a stop to it on many projects in the past and is one of the first system tweaks I put in place when I take on a new project.
Discover why your SAP Project Management must include a document management system with check in and check out and document status reporting capabilities.
Is this your status reporting situation?
Blind Leading the Blind Will Not Work
Why bring this up, in 2022? Because though ‘new technology’ is always being introduced to the world of SAP Project Management, it turns out, that in order to introduce new ways of working, many old, previously solved problems are again ‘unsolved’.
You saw the movie, now see how to avoid the problem.
On most projects, as a project manager, you have a large number of documents and tasks in work, by a large number of internal and external project team members.
A Document Management System (DMS) is What You Need
Your DMS project management system capabilities must include two key technical functionalities for you and your team to manage this successfully or you will find that you are 'chasing status', versus having the guy who actually creates a status change of some sort, i.e., completing a document, and having the system report that to you.
What are those two key capabilities?
The first is the ability to check out and check in a document.
This is far different than tracking versions of a document. Check out means one person checks out the document, and no one else works on it while that person works on it (nor can anyone else work on it while it is checked out).
Yes, I know, you will say, certain technology providers provide the ability to jointly collaborate. This is a good thing, but it leads to a problem, and the second key capability requirement.
The second key required capability is the ability to put a document in ‘completed status’.
You, as the project manager, may literally have dozens to hundreds of individual documents (which is really a way to say mini-projects) in work. You will need to have one person who can declare that a document is complete, while that person may need to collaborate with many people to get the document completed.
Managing Complex Projects At Scale
For instance, I once worked as part of a team that closed down an Air Base, during a war, and redeployed it (moved the base to another physical location). The number of documents and individual tasks involved numbered in the tens of thousands. There was no way the project manager could chase down each and every one of these in any reasonable time.
Delegate Effectively
As a project manager, you will no doubt want to review the document, have input on it, perhaps even work on it yourself, but mostly you will simply want to know what it says as you will be expected to know it. However, you are much better off when you have the technical ability to delegate the responsibility and authority to complete the document and then revert to monitor role.
I mentioned there might be dozens to hundreds of documents in work at any one time and you need a way to stop ‘chasing’ status and instead, concentrate on managing the project, because, after all, as it was once stated to me, you are ‘large and in-charge’.
Project Management is a complex undertaking similar to directing a movie
So really, there is a third key capability you must have in your project.
You need to have the ability to report on document status, globally and individually.
What this means is that you must have a technical system, and here, typically, I am referring to Microsoft Project Enterprise Edition integrated with Sharepoint or another globally visible shared folder system.
Ode to SAP Solution Manager
If you have done like I do, which is to try to establish an ideal, classroom environment for your project, you will also have already installed and have running SAP Solution Manager, which provides a vast array of reporting functionalities for the documents you will store as part of the blueprint and realization phase, but not part of the larger SAP project, for instance, procurement contracts (or you can stretch it a bit and use it for those as well).
Revise Task Estimates With Care
Finally, whatever infrastructure you set up for managing your project, you must be able to collect task estimates from the people who are going to do the tasks. Yes, you no doubt have a set of estimates based on, theoretically, past project experience of the implementer. What you may not realize is that whatever ‘estimates’ you have in hand, were highly influenced by what it took to get to contract signature. Enough said.
SAP Solution Manager + MS Project
The point of the estimates is that they need to be entered, by the team leads, in SAP Solution Manager, which has an integration to MS Project, (though I believe it is still only one way at the time of writing this post).
Initial Project Scope
What I recommend here is that during the project preparation phase is for you, the project manager, to set the initial project scope, using the Solution Manager wizard. Then, once your team leads are in place, insist on dates being entered as well as team members for each business process procedure you will be working on.
Do an export, and now you have something you can work with in the MS project plan. If you have access to the SAP Activate Roadmaps, you can also download project plans for each of the various types of SAP HANA implementation roadmap flavors. These can, in-turn, be uploaded to SAP Solution Manager to seed your project.
SAP Project Folder System
Closing the loop here, you need to establish a shared project folder system that provides, among many capabilities, check out and check in as well as status reporting for each document, i.e., in-work, complete, parked, unknown as well as date due, date complete, date assigned, and possibly others.
Project Management Checklist
I have produced a series of Project Management checklists that cover many other critical areas not typically included in the ASAP implementation methodology. If you want to get started and benefit from my experience, feel free to click the button below.
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